Always a Mystery
by Laura Schiller
Summary: After "The Name of the Doctor", Clara has several questions left.


Always a Mystery

By Laura Schiller

Based on: Doctor Who

Copyright: BBC

The Doctor carried Clara in silence all the way out of his time stream, across the fields of Trenzalore, and back into the TARDIS. She clung to him gratefully, too exhausted to speak or even think; processing the memories of dozens of lifetimes, the rescue of eleven Doctors and the sinister demeanor of a twelfth had left her with an excruciating headache. Still, nothing in the universe could prevent her from being curious, and so as soon as he set her down in her guest bedroom, she caught hold of his sleeve and asked the first question that came to mind.

"Doctor … "

"It's all right, Clara," he said softly. "You're safe now."

"I know." She smiled. "Thank you. Why didn't you tell me you were married?"

The nonsequitur made him blink.

"It's just … if you had told me earlier, I wouldn't have … "

She blushed hotly, recalling all their flirtatious little jokes, the earnest way he had called her "beautiful" and kissed her burned palm during their adventure inside the crashed TARDIS, the Cyberplanner's words, and especially the way she had snogged him senseless in Victorian London. No wonder he had squirmed.

She'd known all along that falling in love with him would be a bad idea, but it would have been nice to have a previous marriage be the reason. As opposed to short, bossy, human Clara Oswald simply not being interesting enough.

The Doctor sighed and snapped his fingers, making a soft armchair emerge from the nearby wall. He folded his lanky body into it and leaned forward, contemplating her with distant green eyes, seeing right through her to wherever the ghost of River Song had gone.

"If you must know," he said, in a low, hoarse voice as tired as her own, "Technically I'm widowed."

"Technically?"

"And I didn't mention her because, shortly before I met you in Victorian London, I'd just seen her for what I believed to be the last time."

_Oh. Oh, Doctor._

She remembered her own father at her mother's funeral, his hair seemingly turned grey overnight, mechanically touching her shoulder as she clutched _101 Places To See_ against her chest. His eyes empty of all the warmth that love had put there. The quiet of their house, broken only by his implacable cleaning and organizing – always a tidy man, the loss of Ellie's creative chaos had sent him over the edge. Clara had been forced to start a shouting match just to get him to say her name, and another one to finally bring out his bottled tears.

She doubted that tactic would work this time, with a man who had over a thousand years' experience of running away from his feelings. Still, she was curious.

"What did you mean when you said you … made a backup?"

"I did." He brightened, ever so slightly, at his own cleverness. "I uploaded her consciousness into the computer system of the greatest library in the universe."

"Like the Great Intelligence?" She frowned, trying not to think of the endless seconds she had spent trapped inside the WiFi.

"_Nothing_ like the Great Intelligence," he assured her fiercely. "She's free to leave at any time she chooses. Besides, it's the greatest library in the universe, remember? She's got the data on every time, place and person there ever was or will be. And her friends are with her. As deaths go, it could have been a whole lot worse… don't you think so, Clara?"

His smile didn't fool her. The way his voice faltered at the word 'death' showed her everything he felt.

"You'll see her again, right?" she asked, reaching out to squeeze his hand.

"I believe so." For the first time that day, his bitter little smile brightened into a real one, spreading out across his face and into the corners of his eyes like a small sunrise. "I'll have to see her again, won't I? Just to prove that mad archeologist wife of mine how wrong she is."

"About what?"

"If I ever loved her, she said, I'd say goodbye like I was coming back. _If!_" He raised his voice, hands and eyebrows as high as they could go, grinning all over his face, the idea of ever not loving his wife too absurd to contemplate. His black mood gone as if it had never been there.

Clara laughed with him, determined not to show what lay beneath her happiness for him.

The Cyberplanner must have lied to her, she realized, with a bittersweet sense of vindication. She had been right to slap its stolen face. Or even if it had been telling the truth, that was one question even she knew better than to ask. If death itself couldn't come between the Doctor and his curly-haired Professor, Clara felt she had no right even to try.

"One more thing … " she murmured.

"Yes?" He stopped smiling, all the intensity of his gaze narrowing down on her like a spotlight, showing her just how far away he had been. "Are you all right? Do you need anything? Glass of water, cup of coffee, lift to the hospital? You fell into my _time stream_, how in all the worlds are you still alive?"

"I'll try not to take that personally," she quipped, smiling up at him in what she hoped was a reassuring manner. "I'm just wondering … "

She cleared her throat and gathered all her courage, ready for his answer. Whatever it might be, she mustn't break down in front of him. Not today.

"Can we still keep travelling together, now you know what I am?" she blurted out. "Now that you solved the mystery, I mean."

_The only mystery worth solving, _he had called her once, in answer to her fear that her short-lived species must be like ghosts to them. She hadn't even realized then how much of a ghost she really was, having died three times before his eyes, or how many other people he had lost. She would understand if, after all this, he would ask her to leave. No matter how much it might hurt her.

"Clara Oswin Oswald," said the Doctor, placing cool, strong hands on either side of her face, just as he had touched her armor when she was a Dalek. "You will _always_ be a mystery to me."

"Always?"

"Always. For the rest of our lives, I'll wonder what I did right to deserve a friend like you. And _you,_" he kissed her forehead for emphasis, "Are not getting rid of me so easily. Is that clear?"

She could not prevent the tears from rushing to her eyes; he wiped them away, probably guessing that they were (mostly) tears of relief.

_A friend,_ she thought. _I can live with that._


End file.
